Where we Stand

Where do we stand?

I suppose many people if asked this question would think of politics. Or we would think of this or that topic.

Martin Luther in his stance on Justification and the nature of faith triumphed with the words, "here I stand I can do no other." The most important place we stand or fall is in our relation the the cross.

Jesus is the rock. All other ground is sinking sand.

If we truly believe this then we will make it the center of our lives. We succeed or fail on this point.

God stands waiting for all to enter who knock. He asks us to spread the good news of his gracious offer or reconciliation.

God is most glorified when we proclaim the justice of God seen in the gospel and free gift of grace flowing from the cross.

Growth and Admitting Flaws

Often in the Christian life our spiritual growth is hindered because we won't admit flaws. We cannot grow in areas if we refuse to admit we need to grow in areas.

The message of the bible is that man is under the curse of sin. The biblical ethic is so high that an honest understanding of its requirements tells us that we constantly fail.

God has grace on us and counts feeble attempts as a keeping of the law through the purifying blood of Jesus. Grace covers all our transgressions. We should not seek to sin because we have grace. If we are truly saved by grace the grace of God that saves us will naturally make us desire to do good works.

Grace which saves comes from our union with Jesus through faith in his death. The same union with Jesus that comes through faith also begins to change us degree by degree to be like Jesus.

It is faith in the cross which saves us and it is also faith in the cross which is the power which pushes us to grow in grace. Often it is easy to think that salvation and sanctification are caused by two different causes. We are saved and now need to figure out how to live.

Of course there is a need to figure out what Christian life entails, but the element behind both is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The link between justification and sanctification is that both events are tied together and driven by the same element faith in the work of Jesus.

Post: Our Way

The Relationship of Justification and Works

Theology has a movement from grace to works. Works are based on grace.

We first meet God in faith through grace and then we can move to works. You see works are a result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

We cannot start with works before we understand and accept grace. You see it is not humanly possible to please God.

It is the Spirit of God that enables us to grow and begin to keep his commandments. Each day we grow a bit by faith.

It is our union with God through faith that enables us to grow. We become a bit more like God as we walk through the Christian life.

The Spirit enables us to see things as God sees them and start to live as God wishes us to live.

The law of God is burdensome to the natural man because he does not like the will of God. As a man begins to walk with God through faith he begins to see the wisdom of God's ways.

Ultimately he begins to see the law as not just wise but sweet. You see God's law protects human happiness rather than hinder it.

Before man meets God he believes the law hurts or hinders his happiness, but the law actually enables human happiness.

Cheap Grace Is No Grace

Most articulations of grace are very interesting. However one articulation of grace is fairly ugly "cheap grace."

Cheap grace is roughly a position that says that once saved by grace one can live as one pleases. A number of people reject grace as independent form law because of the fear of cheap grace.

The reality is grace is apart from works. But by ones works you can perceive the truth of the grace. A saving faith will never be followed by a life with no fruit.

A good saying is that: the faith which justifies is never alone. We are justified by faith alone, but that faith is never unaccompanied by works.

A faith which never produces works is dead. Because true faith unites one to Jesus and union with Jesus always produces improvement in ones life.

The improvements may be slow and gradual, but they will always come.

Thoughts

A few answers to questions I’ve scribbled in a Journal. Cited where quoting.

What is Faith?
Soren Kierkegaard: Faith requires a man be out over the deep over 70,000 fathoms the attempt to do away with uncertainty is the attempt to do away with faith.

What is Generosity?
Tithe and Freewill offered to God as an overflow of our love for Jesus.

What is Justification?
Westminster Confession: Justification is an act of God’s free grace wherin he pardons all our sins and accepth us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.

What is the significance of riddles?
Truth is often conveyed best indirectly.

Why does money have power over us?
Frequently because we have not renounced it’s power over us by giving back to Jesus.

Salvation

One of the most interesting commercials I have seen explicitly stated what our culture takes for granted. At the end of the commercial a little boy says, "Everyone just wants to do the right thing." If this were true we would not need Jesus but the reality is we often desire the wrng thing. There are no good people that the world keeps speaking of. A good man isn't just hard to find he is impossible to find, except for Jesus who is sinless and eternally God and Man. The good news is that Jesus offers s what we cannot do ourselves if we will simple allow him to do do all the work. Faith is saying, "I cannot be right before God by my strength, I cannot pay my debt - Jesus do for me what I cannot do myself." As scripture records one man of faith, "Jesus have mercy on me a sinner."

History's Relation to Oneself

“It is one thing to believe history, another to believe what it means for me.” – Summary Augsburg Confession

There are many people who believe in the facts that Jesus died on the cross. Some believe this Jesus is God.

But it is quite different to trust Jesus – to realize that only by his death can we have peace with God. Many people today trust God’s favor for them without really coming to grips with the reality of God’s wrath against their sin and a true understanding that it is only because of Jesus’ life of perfect obedience and death that they can have communion with God.

We cannot come to God by any merit of our own; it is only because of the merit of Jesus’ shed blood that we can be right with God.

There is often an interesting dialectic in modern culture. We can place our faith in science and logic but not history.

There is an implicit assumption that story or narrative cannot possibly have significance.

An example may be repeating story lines seen through out modern history. If you talk to many "learned" people today they will wish to scientifically model every "idea" to see if it has "truth."

To many modern man only what can be proven mathematically can be trusted. Maybe such a position seems to have some credibility to it.

Strangely I have never seen anyone with this approach with an awareness of human depravity. What is more scientifically model able than the depravity of the human heart?

Actually you will see this in every academic discipline. There are researches with high credibility that suggest the bible is accurate on certain issues.

However psychologist and sociologists push these things aside suggesting they cannot possibly be true.

How is it that sociology a disciple based on mathematics is so opposed to things like traditional marriage. The statistics show that inside the mathematical approach to the world there is hidden a rebelling against God because many answers have already been deemed inappropriate before testing.

Many tests come out and are dismissed as immediately wrong or "something went wrong" and we need to retest if the result seems bad to the mathematical persons sensibilities. Ironically there is great truth to the fact that math can be made to suggest anything one wants.

The Gospel of Offense

Kierkegaard called the Gospel the “Gospel of Offense.” If the Gospel that is preached does not offend someone somewhere then it is not the Gospel. The Gospel is good news. But to know the good news we must first know the bad news. There is no good news of salvation for sinners by God’s free grace unless there is first the bad news that all men have fallen short of God’s standards and sit in a position of judgment. The Gospel is offensive simply because it insists that there are no good people and that all people have fallen short. Once we accept the bad news, only then, can we accept the glorious news of God’s free grace imputed though faith alone.

Answering the Question: "If all our actions are to some degree sinful then why should we even try for righteousness?"

A response I have made to a good question about what I wrote. Basically the point in question is if all our actions are to some degree sinful then why should we even try for righteousness and why shouldn't we be hopeless. The answer to this is the doctrine of Justification by faith alone apart from works of the law.

Well the reason is that there are degrees of success and failure. The Calvinist, well at least anyone who actually knows some theology, will say that even man's best actions are flawed.

Take for example John Calvin's prayer: "We are poor sinners conceived and born in iniquity. Prone to do evil, incapable of any good. And in our depravity we transgress Gods holy commandments without end or ceasing."

You would be quite wrong in thinking that Calvin would feel a need to lay down and give up. He cannot keep the law for one second! That's the point: he has to put his faith in Christ he has nothing in his credit to show to God. Love is the only correct response to such a free gift from God. Thus the Christian life will be one of loving God and brokenhearted humility that God chose me while I had no good actions no not one to my credit. But, the point is that we have Christ's righteousness in our account, no sin credited to our name.

Romans 3:10-12:

As it is written, "None is righteous, no, not one;
No one understands;
No one seeks for God;
All have turned aside, together they have become worthless.

We have nothing to give to God and nothing to commend ourselves to him. Because of his gracious gift to us while we had absolutely nothing to merit it our hearts turn in love to him. The question you ask though is why we shouldn't give up since all our actions are flawed. Well God calls us to the task of following his commands and if he calls us to an impossible task because we love him we should do it. The Calvinists sees degrees of success and failure. Sincere heartfelt prayers are truly pleasing to God despite their falseness. As Jesus puts it: "if you love me you will do what I command." Doing what he commands of course has no effect on our salvation, because we have Christ's righteousness in us and no sin to our account. God in the bible is often written about as looking upon his servants with favor. This does not negate in the least the fact of the fact all these men's actions are fallen. Calvinism is often misunderstood because people will say that if we are saved by faith alone why not go on sinning? We reply, no we shall not go on sinning that Grace may abound. (Paul had to deal with this one, in Romans 6 maybe that is a good place to look for your answer.) Basically a life where one rests in the comfort of "I believe in God and am thus saved" and has no sign of works in their lives is suspect. See my entry on June 2 because that is what that entry is about. Basically for the Calvinist our great depravity is not to be something to discourage our effort, but it is always used to magnify the intensity of God's glory.